A lesson from science class

Science teaches us that it is harder to get something started than it is to keep it moving once it is rolling.

"An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Newton’s First Law of Motion.

The same is true with our actions. Once we get home and hit the couch, turn on the TV and rest it is difficult to get rolling again. This is like pushing a bolder up a hill. It is difficult to get the bolder up to the peak, an up hill battle. Once the bolder hits the peak it starts rolling down hill pretty much on its own but you have to continue to give it a push here and direct it to keep it rolling past the obstacles like trees and other stones. It is much easier to keep it rolling at that point with just a little effort on your part.

The same is true with your business. It seems like an uphill battle getting a business rolling. It takes time, patience, and persistence to get things rolling. Then it seems like out of no where the business starts growing on its own with a lot less effort on your part.

Many businesses fail because it can take 1 to 3 years before a business just grows on its own. There is a higher failure rate in direct sales and network marketing because there is little cash outlay to get started and it does not hurt as much if you just quit. Typically people that purchase less than the large starter kit will probably quit within the first two weeks. Someone that spends over $1,000 will give it an effort because they do not want to lose that start up investment.

The sad thing is once momentum takes over you are looking around and trying to figure where the money is coming from. At this point it is important to keep active and keep building even though it seems you can step back and watch it grow. During this period you will be able to continue to grow the business with much less effort. This isn’t a product of greed; it is planning for the reality that something outside your control will affect your business and the larger it is the less effect this unplanned event will have on your growth. Products become obsolete, competition may grab some of your market share, or any number of things can affect your growth. If you stay in the game and stay active you will be able to prepare for this change and adjust as needed.

Remember that it takes a lot more effort to start something new then it does to keep doing what you are doing. Once you start something new continue to be committed to making it successful and never quit. A persistent effort will keep your business on a positive track, even on days it may seem impossible. Once you get over the last hurtle the business will seem to be unstoppable. Just continue your efforts as your business grows and you will be an unstoppable force.

The only time you fail is when you stop trying.

What are you doing to improve your life?

How many people you know leave high school or college and then stop educating themselves. Some spend a significant amount of time reading books, but none are for self improvement. Others watch TV instead of motivational or occupational videos. Reality TV and the evening news are more fiction than fact and neither will help you improve your life. If you want to do better you have to be better. Replace fiction with fact. Replace entertainment with truth.

By this point we all realized that school provided the basics and beyond that it is really up to us to continue our education in the direction of choice. If one of your directions is to become wealthy then you need to become educated in the mechanics of wealth. If your choice is to be a successful business person then you must become educated on the mechanics of your type of business.

Successful people never stop finding ways to learn more. If you read two books make one of them on self improvement or motivation. If you watch two hours of entertainment replace one with a educational material.

There is only one person in charge of your destiny. Your success or failure is completely up to you.

Taking advantage of viral marketing

Until recently most people had no idea what viral marketing meant. The concept is easy to understand but making it happen is a lot more complicated. Viral marketing is a technique where new customers purchase products or services but they were referred by existing customers. Probably one of the best forms of viral marketing was the explosion of mail services like HotMail.com a free mail service offered by Microsoft. To market their email companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and others automatically added an advertisement on the bottom of messages before they were sent. As chain email containing jokes, prayers, and luck charms were quickly forwarded around the net the viewers were unknowingly spreading the advertisement about how to get free mail.

Businesses everywhere were looking for ways to spread the message by viral or customer to customer to duplicate the model. Our company uses a technique of sharing photographs by email to friends and family to take advantage of viral marketing.

Here is how ours works:

A customer loads up their photographs to our website for free, they then select an album or individual photographs and click on the share button which allows them to send the photographs to one person or an entire group. Once the email recipient opens the photographs they also have an opportunity to create their own account and upload photographs. As an incentive we give them 20 free prints and a free space. The new customer was never contacted by the company, never saw a paid advertisement, and probably did not even know the service existed before they received the email.

This is so effective that on average each new customer will bring in 20 new customers by way of viral marketing . Our service which was launched in April now hosts 9 million photographs. This is a very powerful method of advertising and it is basically free.

It is easy to get started creating a viral message by adding a signature at the bottom of all of your emails. Simply adding a tag line to the bottom of your email like:

Get 20 free 4” x 6” prints and a free website. Visit yoursitename.myphotomax.com

Every joke you forward and every email you originate will have this signature line. Funny emails travel state lines very quickly and have been tracked around the world. Take advantage of this free form of advertising.

Beyond your warm market, keeping your business rolling

If you are new to marketing there are two types of prospects what is termed warm and cold. Warm contacts are people we know personally typically friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Cold contacts are people we never spoke to before the initial contact.

Most of us contact our warm market first to find interested people in our products or the business. After all we are very excited about the prospect of starting our own business and the impending success of course we want to share that excitement with the people close to us.

So once we have burned through our warm market we can not stop there. We still need to find new contacts. The next step is tapping into the cold market. In today’s high tech environment there are a lot of options for getting cold contacts and here are a few examples:

• Person to person situational prospecting. This is where you start a conversation with people you run into during the normal course of your day.
• Lead Programs. Using online and offline lead generation companies who target people looking for your product or a business opportunity.
• Referrals. Obtaining new contacts by asking existing contact who they might know that would be interested in your product or business.
• Viral Leads. These leads are person to person leads generated by people outside your network. Email chain letters are a type of viral lead.

It makes sense to incorporate some or all of these different lead sources as well as about 40 other forms we teach when building the business. Success in the business is possible by keeping a constant stream of fresh people looking at the business. You should have people looking at the business, some deciding on the business, and others getting started in the business. If you keep a constant stream of people at various stages of getting started you will never run out of qualified people joining your business.

How to work with scripts

You launched your business and your coach gave you a few scripts which outline what you should say to someone about the business. The script sounded great when you read them to yourself, but when you try to use them you get tongue tied and sound like a robot.

You should treat a script like it was a blue print for building a house. It tells you what material to use and where to put it, but it doesn’t tell you how to put it there. You are probably really confused now.

Let us get started with the basics of a contact. You probably started the business because you got excited about the product and you trust the person who introduced you to the business. What got you excited was how the person presented the business and the products. Trust was built by your interaction with the person. It is going to be very difficult to get someone excited about you, your products or the business if it sounds like you are reading from a piece of paper. This immediately tells this new prospect that you are new to the business and it will discount your ability to teach or lead. Teachers and leaders are prepared, before they present their material they create a lesson plan and they already know the material.

In our business people invest in you, they do not invest in the business. Yes we sell them a product or we get them started with a product kit but that isn’t an investment. They truly invest in you. So you want your new prospect to know from the start that you are sincere, prepared, and ready to help them achieve their goals.

Here are a couple of tips for working with scripts that need to be acomplished before you make the first phone call or make your first face to face contact:

• Read the script until it is memorized. Some people can do this in one read. It takes me about an hour to get it down.
• Add your own gestures and flair to the script. If the script isn’t written the way you speak then make some changes. As long as the facts remain the same as originally written you can add your own flair.
• Practice in front of the mirror, family, or a friend until you are comfortable that you are speaking from your heart not reporting the news.

Stick with it until your presentation is down. Always smile before you make your first presentation, even if you are doing so over the phone. People are looking to work with happy, excited, and motivated. If your first few contacts are not that great because you are nervous, stick with it. You will get better. When I get nervous on a contact with a new product I always apologize and say “I am sorry I am a little nervous because this is very exciting and I do not want to mess this up for you”. You would be amazed what that does to turn around the call.

Do you believe in luck?

Do you believe in luck and feel you are just unlucky? When you see someone that is successful on TV or read about them in the paper do you feel they got that way by luck? Of course we hear stories about how someone happened to be in the right place at the correct time and obtained something we wished we had, but often when you dig into the story you find out that there is something much deeper that actually happened.

I have a friend that I have known for years who promoted his band to the point of national and probably international fame. I became is friend because when he was little more than a local act I allowed his band to rent out my facility to put on concerts. I saw what he had to do to promote his band and how his efforts differed from other bands who also performed in our facility. The difference was he wasn't afraid to approach bigger bands and use their fame to promote his events. He convinced younger bands to open for him to attract attendance and make his act the headliner. He did what it took to promote his product. First locally, then they toured in the north east, then on tour around the country. While I saw better acts, his band became more popular because of his efforts. Was he lucky? – no but other bands who were just doing what it took to get into a place and play thought so.

Most people do not realize how much time is wasted doing just enough to get by. Doing just enough to get by usually translates into:

• Missing opportunities
• Doing things over because something was missed.
• Losing time, money and productivity

Doing just enough to get by opens the door to the competition. People that are successful get that way by doing things better than the competition. When the competition moves ahead this is what most people call "luck". "Luck" is one of the excuses we use to justify doing just enough to get by while someone else put in the effort to do a little more and succeed. What is interesting is the people that did put in the effort probably didn't do much more work they were just consistent and did not quit when faced with obstacles.

As you become more successful you are forced to take a look at just how much time is wasted doing just enough to get by. I am as guilty as some people when it comes to doing just enough to get by, but I am less guilty then most people. Several years ago I started taking risks and looking for opportunities to improve my financial and personal life.

Before you can become "lucky" you have to take control of your life and take responsibility for your actions. You can't replace consistent effort with excuses and ever expect to be "lucky" or successful.

Ever have someone stand you up?

Do not get angry by missed appointments and no answers, just plan ahead. If you are setting only one appointment for a time slot you are setting yourself up for failure. You should be scheduling half hour to one hour slots for contacts and planning that some people will not be available when you call.

If you plan ahead you will have a couple of people in a time slot instead of just one. The best way to do this is set aside blocks of times just for follow-ups. For example Tuesdays and Thursday from 6 to 7 PM. During these time periods plan at least 4 contacts. Not 1 or 2. I figure 2 contacts for each half hour. Then tell your prospect that you will contact them between 6 PM and 7 PM. One way to do this is as follows:

"Ok ______________ I have time on Tuesday or Thursday between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM. Which day works best for you? " When they answer say. "Ok great I have a couple of other people to contact that day as well, but I will contact you between 6 and 7 PM."

This will do two things: First it will set up the fact that other people are looking at the business so you may not be on the call exactly at the start of the time slot and second it will create excitement over the fact that other people are interested too.

Your time is your most valuable asset do not waste it waiting on people that do not value you or your business. If the person misses your appointment always follow-up with a call and let them know you do not have time to waste. I like to say something like:

Hello __________ this is _______________. We had an appointment for ___________. I know things can come up at the last minute but with a business opportunity that is exploding like this I have a lot of other people that are interested. Give me a call when you get free, I have some openings two weeks from today or if you like you can give me a couple of times you are free and if someone else cancels I will call you from my waiting list.

Remember you are holding all the cards and you have the business opportunity not the other way around.

You only need one person in your business

I get to talk to new people every week as a result of this business. After a while I got a real sense of who will and will not get started and how far will go to achieve their dreams. As I said in a previous blog entry there is no real secret to business, any business, it only takes desire to achieve success.

So are you involved in your business? I am amazed how many people start a business and then look to others to make it successful. The reason one out of three business fail each year is not because of demand, there will always be demand for any product. It is not because of money; you can start part time from home with many businesses. It is because the person starting the business never got involved.

Oh sure they put up the money for the marketing kit and they went through the training, but they never got involved. In the beginning I did the same thing more than once so this comes from experience.

Getting involved translates into grabbing the steering wheel, hitting the gas pedal, and never looking behind you. It means running out of gas and begging or borrowing more to get that vehicle running again. It is a no way back, I am doing this or else proposition.

No one will ever be more interested in your success than you are. Your road to success is already paved and just waiting for you to travel it. Plan on there being a few boulders and pot holes that you will have to get past because anything worth having does not come easily.

How to turn one prospect into up to 10 leads

This is a tip that will keep your contact list full of fresh leads. When your prospect says “No Thanks” do you end that contact by asking if they know anyone that may be interested?

It’s as simple as saying: “I can tell that you are not at a place in your life right now to join our business. You can see that this is a very exciting opportunity do you know anyone that is business minded or may have told you they need to generate extra income? I can assure you they will be treated as professionally as you did and will probably thank you for my contacting them”

Each referral provides you with an opportunity to contact someone that you would probably never have met or had the opportunity to introduce to your business.

Always ask for referrals!

The heart of a leader

Most people inspire to be more but something gets in the way. For many of use it is perception which translates into unfounded beliefs or a fictional reality.

Perception is very powerful and for many of us the perception that wealth was linked almost exclusively to luck began with our parents. I know my parents worked very hard and they earned enough to pay for a house, cars and put food on the table. We were a typical middle class family. Never traveled much or had fancy things. I was always taught that if you wanted those things you had to go to college and become a doctor or lawyer, otherwise you had to be really lucky. Luck? My parents played the lottery just about every week and we weren’t getting rich that way either, so I guess luck was out.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized that most of the very successful people in our country had minimal college or never finished it. Most of the doctors and lawyers had a nice house and nice things but they weren’t really rich. Worst they had no life outside of the office and their living expenses were in line with their income so if they stopped working they were in the same boat as I was.

So what made these people successful if it wasn’t years of education or the lottery? The answer is drive and determination. They made a goal and they stuck with it until they were successful.

Refocusing your resolve starts with changing your perception. Now that you understand that education alone is not the determining factor in wealth or success you can begin to refocus your goals.

Since most people need to make a paycheck to survive the best first step is to look at your schedule and plan out what hours during the week you have to devote to your goals. It is better to devote 3 or 4 hours in one day then 1 hour over 4 days. Set aside this time like it was an appointment that can’t be canceled. Nothing should invade this time. If you can’t find 3 or 4 hours to devote then you need to take a hard look at your schedule and compress or remove things that steal your time. Time is truly the only thing we have that is more valuable then anything we can own or purchase and most of us waste it like it is in unlimited supply.

Once you have decided when, next you have to decide what. There are thousands of opportunities to choose from. Pick something that you are interested in personally.

The last and most important task is to write down a list of why you are making this change. If your why is to get a house, car, vacation or to do better for your family. You need to write these things down and read them every time you sit down to start work. Some people get sample prints for their dream house or a brochure of the car or vacation they want. Anything to keep reminding yourself why you are taking these new steps.

Don’t ever quit on your dreams!